Bored Games
by DrawMeASheep
Summary: One shot. The team find ways to occupy their copious free time while at the office, which I'm sure exists. The free time, I mean. I'm well aware the TV office is fake.


Disclaimer: I tried to gain ownership of NCIS, but there was another Monopoly-related incident. How do those Parker Brothers live with themselves?

Spoilers: _About Face_, but it's a semi-spoiler. A quasi-spoiler. The margarine of spoilers. The Diet Coke of spoilers – just one calorie, not spoilery enough.

Summary: McGee seemed awfully eager to hide the Scrabble board from Gibbs… So, pre-ep? I guess? This is just a compendium of the ways the team finds ways to entertain themselves when not on active cases – because I'm sure federal agents have all kinds of wacky free time they need to fill to justify their jobs to taxpayers. Or something. I hate April 15th.

* * *

"Urgh."

Ziva looked up from the file she was attentively reading and regarded her partner. "What?"

Tony gazed blankly back at her. "Huh?"

"I thought you said something."

"Nope." He leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk. "You bored?"

"We are supposed to be going through these cold cases while Gibbs is…."

He interrupted, "So, you're bored too?"

She flipped the file closed and moved on to the next one. "Why don't you surf the internet or something?"

"And look at what? I can't watch porn at work. Well, I can't enjoy it, anyway." He winked at her. "Unless you…"

"No," she stated firmly. "Perhaps you should take a nap."

"But I'm not sleepy," he whined, dragging his feet as he walked over to her desk. "Let's play cards or something. Do you have a deck?"

"You have been to my apartment, Tony, so you know I do not."

"A deck of _cards_, Ziva." He sat on her desk and leaned over, making it impossible for her to pretend she was paying attention to her files. "Do you have some master list of potential mistakes that you keep in your desk and wait to use at the moment the opportunity arises?"

"It is not my fault that your language is…" She went through a list of descriptions she was sure he would find impressive, but rejected them all; he might accuse her of making up a word, if only for the sake of annoying her further. She eventually settled on a neutral statement, "I would like to hear you even try to speak Hebrew."

He screwed his face into an expression of concentration and returned to his desk. He was silent for so long that she assumed she'd won, when he suddenly shouted, "Ta da!"

"What?"

"You said you wanted to hear me speak Hebrew. Ta da!"

"Are you going to actually say something?"

"Ta da! That's what you say when someone gives you something. I figured it meant thank you. Although I've always secretly suspected that maybe you're actually saying, 'Fuck off,' as some kind of weird…"

"Toda, Tony," she interrupted, finally understanding what he was attempting to say.

"I know! Ta da!" He puffed up with pride.

"I would like to hurt you right now."

"Oh…shalom! Ha, that's two!"

"Please, stop." She pulled out her top drawer and surveyed the weapons it contained. "Oh! I do have a pack of cards!" She removed them from the box and quickly shuffled. "What shall we play?"

He grinned as he dragged his chair over to her desk. "Why don't you let _me_ deal?"

* * *

The first sound McGee heard when he returned from a non-essential visit to the lab was a loud groan. When he came around the corner, Tony was on his knees in front of Ziva's desk. After a quick check for out of the blue shiny rocks, McGee asked, "Is something wrong?"

"She's got all my money, Probie!"

"Tell him that a straight flush beats a full house in any language." Ziva thumbed through a small stack of singles before pushing Tony back hard enough that he fell against Gibbs' desk, although McGee suspected part of it was for show.

Tony pouted, not attempting to rise from the floor. "You try beating her at poker!"

"Let me get this straight – you thought the Moussad assassin and spy wouldn't have a good poker face?"

"Uh…well…"

McGee shook his head and said to Ziva, "Remind me of this moment the next time he brags about how well his poker night with his cop buddies went."

Tony suddenly bounced off the floor. "You've got money for pizza, right, McGee?"

"You deserve to go hungry." McGee looked at Ziva. "I'm in the mood for Chinese."

"Pad Thai," she amended, "on Tony."

He scowled as she dialed. "We need to find something less competitive to occupy our time."

* * *

"There is no way you can beat me."

"Don't try to psyche me out."

"How can one be reliant on skill in a game of chance?"

Tony narrowed his eyes and rolled the dice. This round was definitely going to be his. One, two, three, four… "Hah! Yahtzee! I win!"

"No, you needed sixty points to win and that is only worth fifty."

"No, the first one is worth fifty, but after that a Yahtzee is worth a hundred. You owe me a large sausage and pepperoni…"

Ziva cut him off, "Where in the rules does it say that?"

"I…I don't know. That's just how the game is played."

"By rules you choose to make up?"

He rose from his seat across from her to attain a superior position; she wouldn't be taller than him unless she stood on her desk now. "Your computer is right there. Why don't you look up the rules online?"

"Why would the rules for this ridiculous game be on the internet?"

"Have you ever even _seen_ the internet?" he countered. "There's probably Yahtzee porn somewhere."

"Is that how you discovered this game?"

He tried to stare her down and nearly succeeded. "You owe me lunch."

"I want a rematch. One where you do not cheat."

"I didn't cheat!"

He flinched from a sudden slap on the head. "Get rid of the dice."

"Boss, I…"

"I don't care," Gibbs said, "just don't do it again."

Tony reluctantly collected the dice and scorecards, whispering to Ziva, "You still owe me lunch."

* * *

Gibbs strode into the bullpen with a sense of foreboding, coffee in one hand and a new case file in the other. "Gear up. We've got a dead Marine in Tysons Corner."

"At the mall?" McGee asked a little too exuberantly.

"I have no…." Gibbs finally realized what was wrong. "Where's DiNozzo?"

Ziva and McGee both stopped in the act of opening their drawers and putting on their coats. She finally answered, "At the hospital."

"Why?"

"He is having a shoe removed from his ear."

Gibbs resisted the urge to ask about anything related to Moussad, eventually repeating, "A…shoe?"

"We were playing Monopoly and Jimmy's piece was the first thing I grabbed." Ziva shrugged, as if her reaction had been the most obvious thing in the world. When Gibbs continued glaring at her angrily, she protested, "He was trying to charge me for payments after I had already passed from the property! You cannot demand retroactive…"

"What the…"

"And it was Baltic Avenue! That is barely even…"

He cut her off, shouting, "No more Monopoly!"

"But Gibbs…"

"If I see another game board in this squad room, you're all gonna be in the hospital!" He stormed out, shouting over his shoulder, "Just bring your damn lunches from home from now on!"


End file.
